Month: September 2014 (Page 1 of 3)

Game Day

We’ve been waiting on this day since October 28, 1985, the day after the last Kansas City Royals post-season game. On that morning, I went off to school, two months into my freshman year of high school. There was a buzz in the air from the Royals winning the World Series the night before. We were putting the final touches on packing up the duplex my mom and I had lived in for five years, along with all of my step-dad’s items he had moved in over the summer, preparing to move into a brand new house the following weekend.

I doubt I spent much time thinking about the future of my favorite baseball team that morning. But I’m pretty sure if I had, I would have never guessed the next time the Royals were in the playoffs I would be grown and married, have three kids, and be living 500 miles away. And, of course, be nearly three decades older.

But here we are, September 30, 2014. I will wear Royals gear today not out of generic home town pride or irony, but rather because it’s the biggest Royals game day since Bret Saberhagen took the hill the evening of October 27, 1985.

I hope, late tonight, I will look back and think it was worth the wait.

Starting Over Again

Twenty years ago I developed a theory about sports. This theory stated that sports teams, or the coaches and administrators that lead them, can sell their souls to the devil in exchange for short-term success.

I came up with this theory after Missouri went 14-0 in Big 8 play in 1994. While they had some fine talent, Melvin Booker and Jevon Crudup most notably, no one expected them to run away with the conference title that year. They rebounded from a terrible December loss to Arkansas, adding junior college transfer Paul O’Liney along the way, and made it to the Elite 8 before falling to Arizona.

That was the last good team of Norm Stewart’s career. I enjoyed teasing my Mizzou friends by claiming that Norm had sold his soul for one last great team and the Tigers wouldn’t be good again until he retired.

I also used this theory against co-workers from my company’s St. Louis office after the Rams won their Super Bowl. Sure, they made another Super Bowl, losing to the Patriots on Adam Vinatieri’s last-second field goal, but the “Greatest Show On Turf” was never quite the same after that one championship season. “Dick Vermeil sold the franchise’s soul to the devil,” I would say loudly at company gatherings when Rams fans I knew were close.

Well, it’s been clear for some time I need to apply my theory to my own team. Clearly Mark Mangino and/or Lew Perkins did some soul selling to earn KU’s 12-1, Orange Bowl champions season in 2007. Another bowl game, again a win, followed the next year, but nothing else has quite gone right since.

For example:

Mangino couldn’t capitalize on the Orange Bowl win, or the first back-to-back bowl appearances in school history. He shunned the diamonds in the rough he built the program with and went after bigger name recruits. He missed on most, and the ones he got were mostly busts once they got to Lawrence.

Then he started shoving kids and making horrible remarks about their dead relatives and got fired, losing his last seven games along the way. Oh, and either he or his offensive coordinator went brain dead when they could have killed the clock and upset Missouri in his final game, giving the Tigers the ball back with time for the winning score.

Lew Perkins swung for the fences to replace Mangino. When he missed on his top target, Jim Harbaugh, he panicked and gave Turner Gill, a guy who won six games at Buffalo, the same money he was throwing at Harbaugh to lure him away from Stanford.

Gill said all the right things, but by all accounts was not prepared to run a BCS-level program. During his two years, despite his bold stands against profanity, hanging out with women after 10:00 pm, and cell phones on nights before games, he somehow ignored everything else. Players were missing classes and failing drug tests left-and-right. Not only were they losing badly each Saturday, but they were an embarrassment off the field, too.

This time there was a new athletic director in place, Sheahon Zenger. He was a “football guy,” having worked for Bill Snyder and several of Snyder’s disciples before getting into administration. He, too, went after some big names. He, too, missed, panicked, and gave Charlie Weis a big stack of money.

Few KU fans were impressed. In fact, most of us declared a loud, “WTF?!?!” Charlie Weis made no sense.

But Charlie signed two five star recruits in two days, brought in a big junior college class in his first recruiting group, including two more five star players, and things looked promising.

Expect all those guys sucked. That vaunted junior college class produced one convicted felon, two knee injuries, and none of its top four players ever played a down for KU.

The losses piled up. So did the anger by people who cared about KU football, and apathy from those who gave up on Jayhawk football decades ago and spend their falls rooting against Missouri and K-State until basketball season begins.

Weis’ firing was inevitable. It was rumored to be on the verge two weeks ago after an embarrassing loss to Duke. A win last week against Central Michigan seemed to give him breathing room. But Saturday’s feckless performance against a pretty mediocre Texas team was apparently the last straw.

I was never a fan of Charlie Weis. But I will give him this: he did a lot of good at KU. People inside and outside the program say he changed the culture, turning pretty much everything off the field completely around from the Gill era. Players are going to class, there haven’t been as many drug issues, and he turned the strength and conditioning program around.

But he couldn’t get wins. He drove nearly 30 players out of the program before his first season. Combined with the failures of his Juco class to get on the field, it was devastating to a program that can’t afford recruiting misses. The numbers on the roster are way down. What little talent there is has no depth behind it. He made two big gambles and lost each one. And for that, he lost his job.

Worse, there was the way he seemed to clearly identify what was wrong with the team and then change the “solution” each week. There wasn’t a strong, consistent voice at the top of the program.

I don’t think Charlie is a bad guy. Yes, he talks too much and is full of himself. And he’s not the offensive guru he was made out to be when he coached Tom Brady. I think he cared about turning KU around and worked hard to do it. He just didn’t have the answers.

Which begs the question who does. KU has never been an easy job, and it’s gotten even more difficult with the current Big 12 schedule. But I also don’t think it’s a terrible job. There’s plenty of talent in the Kansas City area. Glen Mason and Mark Mangino got a lot of those kids. Gill and Weis did not.1 You start there. Yeah, you chase talent in Texas because you kind of have to do that in the Big 12. There is the opportunity for immediate playing time in Lawrence for the next coach to sell.

I think the biggest key is for Zenger and the money men who chased Gill and Weis is to not worry about the weight of the name of the next coach.2 If you find someone who has a proven track record, that’s fine. But, if the best candidate is an energetic guy with a good grasp on how football is played these days and a plan to get the talent to compete, but isn’t a household name, don’t let that stop you.

Also, don’t fear hiring someone who can turn the program around but will leave shortly after. Hell, hope that happens. Hope you hire someone who gets KU back to a bowl game in three years and then takes off for Mississippi State or wherever. That’s a good problem to have! Then you hire the next coach into a healthy program rather than starting from below zero yet again.

My expectations have always been very modest for KU football. One bowl game every 4-5 years is enough for me. Hope for more than that, but use that as the baseline. There might be some 2-10 years in there, but hopefully more 5-7 ones where they are at least competitive most of the time. I don’t think that’s an unreasonable expectation, even in the Big 12. With the right coach, continued improvement to the facilities and support systems, there’s no reason a coach can’t bring in enough talent to compete with all but the Big 12’s elite.

Assuming, of course, that KU has satisfied its deal with the devil for that 2007 season. Haven’t we suffered enough?

Rock Chalk, bitches.


  1. Rumor has it Weis spent almost no time recruiting either Rockhurst or Blue Springs, schools that consistently turn out D1 talent. Not that he can force his kids to go anywhere, but Blue Springs is coached by former KU quarterback Kelly Donahoe. 
  2. Not literally weight. That’s not a Mangino/Weis fat joke in disguise. 

⦿ Friday Links

First up, an important announcement. This Saturday NBC will begin showing old Saturday Night Lives at 10:00 PM Eastern, 90 minutes before the regular broadcast. This week’s episode will be the legendary show when Richard Pryor hosted in 1975.

The episodes will be edited down to fit the one-hour time block before your late local news. It will be fascinating to see if and how NBC edits some of the skits from these old shows. SNL aficionados know there was one skit in particular in the Pryor episode that was ground breaking and shocking but fit what SNL was doing in its initial year. Is it too controversial for 2014? We shall see.


Speaking of NBC, apparently they are cooking up a sitcom built on one of my favorite movies from the 1980s, Real Genius.

Like most reboots, this sounds like a terrible idea. But it makes me want to go back and watch the original, which had to have been one of my five most watched movies between 1986 and 19951.

NBC decides it’s a moral imperative to remake Real Genius as a sitcom


Did you know that the website for Heaven’s Gate, the California cult that mostly disappeared in a mass suicide in 1997 is still operational? Gizmodo’s Ashley Feinberg decided to find out how and why it was still up and running. The result is a fascinating story about the cult itself and the legacy it left behind.

The Online Legacy of a Suicide Cult and the Webmasters Who Stayed Behind


Columnists, especially those who are of the Baby Boomer generation, love to write of how baseball is dying. Craig Calcaterra takes on that argument and shows how, in most ways, baseball is as alive as it has ever been.

I’d personally love a return to baseball of the 1980s, but I guess if I insist on that I’m no better than the Boomers who want to return to the days of Willie, Mickey, and the Duke.

Baseball is dying? Nonsense: The Case for Baseball’s Vitality


When I was a kid, one of my least favorite baseball players was Steve Garvey. There was just something about the guy that rubbed me wrong. I hated how he was viewed as this perfect citizen and model of the modern, American man.

My grandfather, who I would sit and listen to Royals games with in the summer, loved Garvey. That was the only thing I ever remember arguing with him about. I couldn’t understand why he liked Garvey so much.

Anyway, I remember hearing about this article over the years, but never read it. It is Pat Jordan’s profile of Garvey and his wife for Inside Sports magazine from 1980. To read it now is pretty devastating. I can’t imagine what it was like to read this back in ’80, when things like this just didn’t get printed. Jordan, who is a former baseball player himself, absolutely destroys Garvey while his wife offers a number of absolutely shocking admissions.

It’s uncomfortable to read, but fascinating given when it was published and the people involved. Pretty great that Bronx Banter selected it for reprinting last spring.

Trouble in Paradise


Finally, via Kottke, some wonderful video of the aurora borealis taken in Canada a year ago. I’ve never seen the Northern Lights, but would love to some day. Especially if they look like this.


  1. Guessing those movies were Fletch, Vacation, Better Off Dead, Fast Times At Ridgemont High, and Real Genius

Friday Vid


“Duel” – Swervedriver
I spent 30 minutes or so yesterday watching a bunch of bad videos from the early-to-mid 1990s. And I mean bad in every way. They were poorly produced in their original form and had been uploaded to Youtube in terrible quality. Good songs, horrible videos.

This popped up as I was working through that list. Fortunately it’s not of terrible quality, because this is one of the great semi-lost tracks of the decade. And the album it comes from, Mezcal Head, is a must for lovers of mid-90s alt rock. It’s one of those albums that should have been massive, but got released a touch too late as the alt rock revolution was crumbling and bands who made more radio friendly versions of the genre were taking over. Which is a damn shame, because it is a forgotten classic.

Love And Hate And Love Again: Me And The Royals

It goes back to 1978, I believe.

Football was the first sport I discovered, but baseball followed soon after. We lived in southeast Missouri at the time, in the heart of Cardinals country. But on a trip to Kansas City that summer, my uncles and the boyfriend of one of my cousins introduced me to the Royals.

I still remember repeating the name “George Brett” over-and-over to myself so I wouldn’t forget it after the boyfriend explained to me that Brett was not only the Royals best player, but one of the best players in all of baseball. I got to tag along on his date with my cousin1 and I know I lost the name a few times and had to ask for it again.

“Who is that guy you said was the best player?”

I also remember how cool the name Amos Otis sounded to me.

Later on that trip, my dad and uncle took me to a game at Royals Stadium. I remember Dennis Leonard was pitching against the Chicago White Sox. Other than that, I recall little, other than how big the stadium looked from our upper deck seats.

Once I returned home, I began watching the NBC Game of the Week on Saturday, and Monday Night Baseball on ABC, hoping the Royals would be on. When school started in the fall, I checked out every baseball biography I could find to learn more about the game. On the nights the Cardinals were on TV, I watched and tried to discern the rules of the game.

I remember coming home from school one day that fall, turning on the radio, and hearing on the news that George Brett had hit three home runs in a playoff game in New York. The Yankees won the game, and the series, though, meaning I was in on the final heartbreak of that 1976-78 run. That was the first time sports made me cry.

By the time the next baseball season rolled around, I was well prepared. I had my Zander Hollander baseball guide. I knew who the best players in both leagues were. I had a modest collection of baseball cards. On our annual trip to Kansas City that summer we tried to get general admission seats to a game when the young phenom Rich Gale was pitching for the Royals against California’s Nolan Ryan. My uncle and cousin waited in line for nearly an hour, but before they got to the ticket window the game sold out. When told that we would be going home to listen to the game, I cried again.

I remember bits of the 1978 World Series, but I devoured the 1979 series, that epic clash between the Orioles and Pop Stargell’s Pirates. I knew the Royals would be there next year, and wanted to be prepared.

We moved to Kansas City in July of 1980. My first weekend in town, the Royals played an amazing series in the Bronx against the Yankees. Brett put one into the upper deck Friday night. Willie Wilson went 10-15 that weekend. The Royals won two of three from the hated Yanks.

A couple weeks later I was listening when Denny Matthews told me that George Brett was doffing his helmet to the crowd after his double lifted his batting average over the .400 mark. In early October, our teachers gave us a bonus recess during game one of the ALCS. A few kids went outside but most of us stayed in our room and watched the game, which featured a Brett home run. A few nights later Brett hit another massive blast in the Bronx and the Royals were on their way to the World Series. I celebrated in my aunt and uncle’s living room.

The World Series was a blur. Blown leads in the first two games. Brett and Willie Mays Aikens bring the Royals back in games three and four. Walking through a nearly deserted and deathly quiet Bannister Mall after Dan Quisenberry blew game five while I waited for my parents to get off work. Wilson’s strike out to end the series that again caused me to weep.

No other year was ever like 1980 for me. I was still a huge baseball and Royals fan. My card collection grew dramatically. My June birthday meant most of my gifts were Royals or baseball related. I harbored secret wishes that my newly divorced mom would meet George Brett and he would be my step-father. But the Royals started slow in 1981, the strike wiped out two months of the season, and I was now playing baseball. The Royals weren’t everything to me. I had my own team to worry about.

My best memories of the years between 1980 and 1985 are the warm summer nights I spent at my grandparents’ home in central Kansas. If the Royals were playing, they always had the kitchen radio tuned to the game so grandma could listen while cleaning up after dinner, and grandpa had a radio he carried everywhere with him so he wouldn’t miss a pitch. We would sit on their front porch listening to the game, eating ice cream, while watching the sun set. He and I watched the Pine Tar game together in disbelief. The first thing he said to me after his late afternoon nap that day was, “That damn Billy Martin.”

The fall of 1985 was fantastic. The Royals roared back to take the division, then the ALCS, and finally the World Series. It was the fulfillment of all my baseball hopes and dreams. And, sadly, it was the end of the glory years.

The team got older and faded. Danny Manning and Michael Jordan made me reevaluate which sport I loved the most. Heading to college changed things, making me as obsessed about college basketball as I ever was about baseball. The final straw came when the Royals signed an aging Kirk Gibson rather than hometown guy Joe Carter. I filed for divorce, leaving the team I had loved most first behind. Then the 1994-95 strike and lockout pushed me away from the game itself.

Eventually, I came back. At first, it was casually and as an uninterested spectator. I’d go if someone else had tickets, and mostly to make fun of the Royals. A few years later I was part of a season ticket package. The bursts of hope that came with the arrivals of Mike Sweeny, Carlos Beltran, Johnny Damon, and Jermaine Dye were short-lived. Soon the franchise was a complete joke, losing games at a record pace while refusing to spend money to improve the roster. I said, not completely jokingly, that one day Kaufman Stadium would be the nicest stadium in AAA baseball. Yet I was paying attention. Slowly but surely I became a fan once again.

When I moved to Indianapolis, that changed everything again. The Royals were decent that summer, and the team became one of my hooks back to my home town. Not all of my KC friends shared my love of KU sports, but just about everyone was a Royals fan. The team’s successes and failures were an excuse to send an email back to my buddies who I knew were watching too. Each year when a new season began, I dropped $120 on the MLB.TV package. Most seasons I was done watching games by June, as the Royals were hopelessly out of the race already. But I would continue to listen to the games deep into the summer. Maybe not every night, but several times a week they were the soundtrack to evening lounging or lazy weekend afternoons. They may not listen with me the way I listened with my grandfather, but I hope when my girls are older, they associate summer with me sitting and listening to baseball games.

“You know, your grandfather used to listen to baseball every night on his phone…”

Last year it appeared the Royals were out of it by the All-Star break again. But a late July hot streak shot them back into the Wild Card chase, and I was watching every night. Although they were only on the fringes of the pennant race, it still felt good to be watching them playing meaningful games in September for the first time since I was a freshman in high school.

And then this year. All the hopes and expectations of nearly 30 years were laid on top of this one season. Predictably, the Royals appeared to be circling the drain in late May. Three weeks later they were in first place. A mid-July swoon dashed those hopes and had fans who had been afraid to get their hopes up angry that they had been fooled again.

So the Royals naturally ripped off their best month since the late 1970s, taking the division lead for three weeks, getting feature articles in magazines and newspapers across the country, and producing dozens, if not hundreds, of posts just like this.

Today, four games remain in the 2014 season. The Royals trail Detroit for the AL Central lead by two games. They’re tied with Oakland for the Wild Card lead. Seattle is two games behind. With two more wins, the Royals are in the playoffs. With two more Seattle losses, the Royals are in the playoffs. ESPN lists the Royals playoff odds at 99.9%. It’s not quite over, but it’s damn close.

The Royals post-season could be quick. They will likely face Oakland pitcher Jon Lester in the Wild Card game, and he has owned the Royals in his career. Two-and-a-half to three hours after Lester or James Shields throws their first pitch, the Royals could be done, with only a loss in a 163rd game to show for their years of building and rebuilding and an uncertain future ahead of them.

It’s been a fantastic season. Even for all their problems, the Royals have done enough to be one of the six best teams in the American League. A few breaks here and there and they could be winning the division, and guarantee themselves at least a five-game division series. But if that one game Wild Card playoff is all we get, I’ll accept it happily.

One game after 29 years of hoping and waiting and leaving and coming back and hoping again.


  1. In retrospect I think I was sent along on the date by my aunt and uncle rather than invited by the boyfriend. I’m sure he was thrilled that a seven-year-old was joining his high school date. 

They’re Stealing!

My favorite dumb sports controversy of the weekend was Kansas State football coach Bill Snyder whining about Auburn allegedly stealing K-State’s offensive signals during their game on Thursday.

What an ass.

(K-State fans, please note, I think any coach in any sport whining about their opponent stealing signs is stupid. If it was Charlie Weis I would be writing the same thing. Then again, I think most of what Charlie Weis says is stupid, so that might be a bad example.)

This isn’t 1975. Every football team has hours of film on their opponents that they study and break down in great detail. I’ve been lucky enough to sit with a coach while he studied film and the modern programs that they use are pretty incredible. Put in any situation, any formation, and the program spits out the times a team has used that set up and has all the film of those plays ready to review.

After a week of prep (Or in Auburn’s case, a week and a half), the coaches and players are pretty well versed on what to expect on each snap of the ball. Knowing down, distance, and formation, they often know, down to a handful of plays, what will come next.

A good offensive coordinator should do his best to disguise plays, adjust tendencies, and be sure that each play call has built-in audibles to throw the defense off.

If Kansas State Thursday, or Florida State in January’s national title game, thinks Auburn is stealing their signs and know what plays are coming, they need to change things up. Use new signals. Adjust which coach/player the quarterback is getting the play from. Automatically check to another play off the signaled play. Or just run the plays in from the sideline.

But don’t whine about it on national TV.

Especially since you know there were coaches and players on the K-State sideline attempting to do exactly the same thing. They were watching the Auburn sideline to attempt to figure out what defensive formation or offensive play was being called so they could adjust before the snap.

Every college team does this. Every NFL team does this. Every baseball team has someone watching the third base coach and manager in the dugout, doing their best to get a read on what is coming next. It’s always been part of the game and always will be, at least until we evolve to the next level of consciousness and are able to send signals telepathically. And even then, teams will be trying to read the minds of their opponents to see if it’s going to be a fastball, if the runner is going, or if the next snap will be a pass or a run.

Stealing signs will rarely have a huge impact on the game. You might know a fastball is coming, but you still have to hit it. You might know the next play will be an off-tackle run to the right with a tight end in motion leading the way, but you still have to matchup and stop the ball. You might know KU is going to run the Chop play when they need a three-point shot late in a game, but you still have to guard it.

So coaches need to stop bitching about it. It’s childish, silly, and stupid.

And for a coach like Bill Snyder, who is one of the best of the modern era, it’s embarrassing.

If you’re getting beat, you need to coach better. Not complain.

Girl…

Our girls have a stupid new game that is driving us crazy.

It all began back in late July, early August. We went to the mall one Sunday to try on new shoes for the school year. With all the local schools set to begin, the mall was packed. I spent most of the time making sure our girls stayed together, didn’t get in anyone’s way, and were ready to try shoes on when the harried salespeople brought their stack of options out.

A few days later, L. began saying an odd phrase repeatedly.

“Guuuuuuuuurl. You got a bad attitude!”

Uh, what?

Soon, L. was adding a little of her own flavor to it.

“Guuuuuuuuurl, you gotta a bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, attitude!” beatboxing the bad, bad, bad, bad section while throwing in some break dance moves.

At first we wondered where the hell this came from. When I asked, L. looked at me like I was crazy.

“I heard it at the mall while we were looking for shoes!”

OK then.

Apparently she heard a mom, I’m guessing she was an African-American woman, telling her child to get her act in gear and try her shoes on without any complaints. And it obviously struck a chord with L., because that phrase was on high rotation immediately.

So this went on for awhile and got to be a little annoying. But then M. and C. joined in and took it to the next level of annoyance.

Now the three of them play a game called “Girl,” that involves running around and saying “Guuuuuuurl!” over-and-over. Sometimes there is other dialogue sprinkled in, but apparently the key is to respond to every question or comment with “Guuuuuurl!”

Funny for a minute, maddening after. Especially on the way to school.

“Guuuurl, look at that bridge.”
“Guuuurl, do you have library today?”
“You know it, guuuurl.”
“Guuuurl?”
“Guuuurl!”
“Guuuurl?!?!”

And then C. had to add her contribution.

First off, you have to understand that when C. has pigtails, she gets all kinds of extra crazy. I’m not sure what it is, but her eyes get extra wide, she starts whipping the pigtails around, and giggles uncontrollably. And she’s been wearing pigtails more often than she has in years recently on soccer days.

Also, in the course of the game Girl, C. somehow got renamed Girl. I don’t know if she was the big winner or what, but now M. and L. often refer to her as “Guuuuurl” rather than C..

So, naturally, C. decided to name her pigtails Girl Junior and Girl Junior Junior. Thus, she flies around the house with her pigtails, squealing and shouting, talking about Girl Junior and Girl Junior Junior while M. and L. shout “Guuuuuuurl!” at her.

Serenity Now.

⦿ Friday Links

A bevy of links this week.


Rolling Stone gets it wrong a lot. But it’s good to see that there are enough Gen Xers on the staff these days to proclaim 1984 as the best year for pop music ever. Have fun reading through their top 100 singles for the year. Man, was Prince on fire back then.

100 Best Singles of 1984: Pop’s Greatest Year


While on the topic of music, Matt Gemmell writes about all kinds of topics, but mostly technology related issues. I enjoy those posts, but I really like when he writes about the personal. Here, he writes about his favorite song of all time. You would be correct if you guessed this sent me to my notebook to scribble down ideas for a similar post of my own.

Sultans


Mat Honan is becoming a bit of a regular in these weekly posts. Here is his terrific ode to the now departed iPod Classic.

For ten years my iPod—in various incarnations—was my constant companion. It went with me on road trips and backpacking through the wilderness. I ran with it. I swam with it. (In a waterproof case!) I listened to sad songs that reminded me of friends and family no longer with me. I made a playlist for my wife to listen to during the birth of our first child, and took the iPod with us to the hospital. I took one to a friend’s wedding in Denmark, where they saved money on a DJ by running a four hour playlist, right from my iPod. And because the party lasted all night, they played it again.

On Death and iPods: A Requiem


As I’ve been dipping my toes into the deep pool of Ryan Adams’ musical output, I’ve been reading a lot about him. Rather conveniently, this lengthy profile of the enigmatic and prolific artist appeared last week.

At Home, Kinda, With Ryan Adams


Finally, a really well researched and written article about Christopher Knight, the man who disappeared into the Maine wilderness and lived for nearly 30 years with almost no contact with other humans and only a well-hidden tent for protection from the elements.

The Strange & Curious Tale of the Last True Hermit

Friday Vid

http://youtu.be/5stvvnDbC8w

“Public Enemy No. 1” – Public Enemy
Holy crap! Always the best live act in hip hop, Public Enemy can still throw down nearly thirty years after releasing their first album.

As I watched this, especially the closing moments when Jimmy Fallon comes on stage, I thought back to where the music and TV worlds were when Yo! Bum Rush The Show came out in 1987. Public Enemy was not, nor was any other hip hop act, getting invited onto The Tonight Show. Even Arsenio Hall, who was just getting started, wasn’t going to invite acts like PE on for a few more years. If anything, Johnny Carson was the entertainment embodiment of everything Chuck D was rapping about when it came to the dominant white culture.1

But in 2014, not only does PE get invited onto The Tonight Show, but the host greets them warmly, quoting their lyrics. And, most amazingly, Chuck D. gives Fallon a big, friendly hug.

We’ve come a long way.


  1. Which is a little ironic since Carson was a noted liberal. He probably wasn’t down with “militant” blacks, but he certainly was a reserved voice for civil rights and a more inclusive society. 

Girls Games

And now for some girls sporting notes.


M. ended her kickball season last night. Her team got another big win (45-11 after trailing 9-4 to begin the second inning) to end their season at 6-1. Unfortunately, that was not enough to make the championship tournament. Only the four division winners go into the tournament. And their one loss came to a team that went 7-0.

That single loss was a bummer. The other team scored eight runs with two outs in the fifth and the St. P’s girls couldn’t recover, losing 26-19. One bad inning on defense away from the playoffs. Which I don’t think the girls really cared about. The coaches and their humble scorekeeper (me!) were bummed out. Especially since the 7-0 team pulled a bit of a fast one, getting one of the other teams from their school to forfeit rather than reschedule a rained-out game to ensure the St. P’s couldn’t catch them. There’s always some drama…

I think M. had a lot of fun this year. She got better, although we still need to work on her kicking and get her to understand her role in the field better. When she plays an infield position or in the outfield, she’s really good at getting to the ball, collecting it, and getting it back to the pitcher. Last night she played one of the suicide positions, the two players who stand by the pitcher and have to deal with most of the balls kicked in the infield, and was often at a loss at what to do.


The other two girls began their soccer seasons two Sundays ago. L. has scored five goals in each of her first two games and is up to her usual bad-assery. Even though she’s not yet six, I bet we could have moved her up to U8 this year and she would have been fine. But her team is all kids that are either in kindergarten with her at St. P’s, or kids who will go there next year, which she loves. She and L., who is in the other K class, have become fast friends. They’ve played together in both games and have terrorized the boys trying to stop them. When I’ve made it to school early for pickup while the K classes are still outside, I always see those two together organizing their classmates in some kind of activity.


The real fun is C.’s team, which as you may recall, I am coaching. As in head coaching. All by myself. Well, a couple dads who know soccer much better than I do but have to travel a lot are helping out when they can. But the planning of practices, setting the lineups, etc. is all on me. Which was thoroughly frightening at first, since I never played soccer and am doing it all by trial and error.

That’s compounded a little by our team having a lot of kids who either have never played soccer before, or have not played in several years. Fortunately, most of the kids are at least fast and like to run, which can mean a lot when you move to the bigger U10 fields.

Fortunately we had three weeks of practice before our first game, so I was able to get them used to each other and working on their skills. Still, when we began our first game, I realized we hadn’t spent nearly enough time on how to move the ball around the field. The goalies didn’t understand that they didn’t have to stand on the goal line to pass out to their teammates. The defenders didn’t understand how they had to work together, or how they were not tied to the penalty box when the ball went forward. The midfielders didn’t understand how to work together up front, or how to get back to help the defenders.

All that showed on game day as we lost 5-2, with all the goals against coming on plays where the defenders stood around and watched the other team fire on goal.

So we worked on that before the second game. And it appeared to pay off. We got a 5-1 win in week two, giving up the only goal in the last ten seconds of the game. The kids did better on every part of the field, we actually had some passing in the attack, and we thoroughly dominated possession.

The highlight, for me, was the first goal of the game. C. was one of our midfielders (We play two defenders, three midfielders because telling them we had two midfielders and one forward seemed to confuse them) and as she often does, got way ahead of the defense, but was out on the wing. She cut the ball into the box, there was some back-and-forth with the defense and our team as they all knocked the ball around, and eventually she collected it and fired it in. Dad got a little fired up. Not only was it her first “real” soccer goal – one that came with a goalie playing – but it was the first one for our family, as M. was usually playing defense in her U10 days.

We have two boys that are pretty fast and can shoot. We have another girl that isn’t as fast as C. without the ball, but with the ball she can fly up the field and knows how to shoot. We have a girl I was a little concerned about because she isn’t very fast and is very quiet, so I had a hard time telling if she was grasping everything. In our first game I put her in as a defender and she did awesome, getting in front of the ball and either taking it away or clearing it out each time she had a chance.

The best part is that almost all of the kids are always smiling and laughing. I think it helps that several of them don’t have much soccer experience. It’s literally a game to them and they are excited to get out and play. The boy who is probably our best player doesn’t have that same attitude, and I think it’s because he knows the game more and is thinking more about winning and losing. Which I can identify with, as I was hyper-competitive when I was a kid.1

A month of practices and two games in, I’m feeling more comfortable. I still wish I knew better, instinctively, how to teach the kids game-specific stuff. But the dads who are helping out do a great job helping me there.

We play a team that is 2-0 this week. Hopefully I’ll have the kids ready.


  1. “Was?!?!” my wife would say. I’ve mellowed but I still have my moments. 
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